TOPIC: Shot with Nikon D7000

I shot this with one camera which is my Nikon D7000 and used FCPX to edit. This is my first video I've done. I came into doing this video not knowing anything about video editing. So please, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I would like to continue doing more videos and make them better.

At about 2:23 you use the panes effect, and it's static. I'd make them move slightly, drift.

Basically it's nice. My only advice would be to rethink this. Write down on paper for yourself what the "story" is you're supposed to be telling, from start to finish. Then use any effects to help tell that story, not just to look cool.

Problem with music videos, is most folks do them to just be fancy, cool effects reels, and don't actually tell the story visually that is being told in the musical piece. If they match, you'll blow folks away. Otherwise it's another effects reel put to music bragging about what plugins you've bought.

My Crafting FX For FCP video series at macProVideo is all about this, how to use graphic design principles to improve your effects, transitions, etc.

But the visual quality is nice and clean, there's a lot of creativity in there. I'd like to see you rethink the "story" and work on it more. Great first shot! Now, take it to the next level.

Okay cool. If you only used one camera though, do you go through the song several times from different angles? If so, how do you synch audio with visuals, as I assume there would be noticeable differences with the words??

When shooting music videos, you always have a boom-box playing the CD loud for the performers to lip sync to. Every camera is also recording live sound, so they pick up the boom-box. That way you can sync by audio, and everything lines up properly.

No, you use the boom box sound recorded by the cameras to sync to the actual audio track in a Multicam clip. When mixing the Multicam clip, you assign the actual audio clip as the non-changing audio track.

I personally like the video. The rap track's not bad either. For me, it was cool, & the effects mostly worked. In rap videos of this style, you are the story. You have a marketable look & sound too. The rhyming begins to weaken slightly in act 3, you might want to tighten that a tad. The only thing I noticed was the rhythm of your cuts, usually they were quite quick, which worked with the beat & kept it interesting with the various effects you were using. Except there were a couple spots where the shot lingered too long, one was when you were doing the tic tac toe screen or Brady Bunch screen, whatever that's called. Cut that to at least half that length. There's another one that goes on too long after the first break down about 5-10 seconds after the felt tip marker notebook part. I like the black & white & over exposed theme, but when the shot is wide & I see it's a sheet hanging behind you it screams amateur. Some black & white shots in an alley with a brick wall & some graffiti behind you, might be good to juxtapose. You might have to experiment to get either the same over exposed bright look in that environ or try darker or super film grainy. See what works best. I'd film one more session at a location like that, then recut them together.